Flashback Friday - Great-Aunt Edie

I haven’t shared a Flashback Friday in quite a while, and since I found another one of my mom’s photo albums from back in the day, I thought I would share some of the pictures I found there.

Oh, dear, and just now I fell into the rabbit hole, reading through the old obituaries, trying to put Mom’s family together. Okay, focus, Chris. You were going to just share one of the relatives today, worry about the others another time.

Here we are. My mom’s mom, Pauline “Lena” Steinbach Jahn, was one of eight children. She had two sisters, Edith, better known as Edie, and Elsie.  

Of all the old pictures of the old relatives, Aunt Edie is the easiest to pick out, thanks mostly to her short stature. 

All three sisters worked at logging camps in the Northwoods back in the nineteen-teens. 

 She married Otto Long in 1921. My mom always said that at the time Uncle Otto wasn’t yet a citizen, and everyone thought that he along with Aunt Edie would get deported back to Germany.

They never had any kids. But because they lived on a farm just up the road from the house I grew up, I probably visited them more than the rest of the aunts and uncles.

 In the living room of their house, Aunt Edie had a rocking chair which had had the curve of the rockers planed off so that it didn’t rock. I could never figure that out.

They didn’t have running water in that house for a long time. I remember the summer my dad installed a bathroom for them. I don’t know how old I was, but it must have been in the late sixties, because I remember it so clearly. I even remember using their outhouse before Dad put in the bathroom. 

Aunt Edie passed away in 1972 and Uncle Otto followed her to heaven in 1976. 

That's feels so long ago. I'm sure other family members have more memories of them.